British MPs break holidays to honour Thatcher

British MPs have interrupted their holidays for a specially convened parliamentary session to pay tribute to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

A polarising figure, Thatcher died on Monday following a stroke at the age of 87, prompting both tributes and scorn from the British public.

British prime minister David Cameron led the the tributes, but some Labour MPs boycotted the House of Commons session.

Mr Cameron called Thatcher a remarkable woman who "defined and overcame the great challenges of her age".

"She won three elections in a row, serving this country for a longer continuous period that any prime minister for 150 years," he said.

In his remarks, Labour leader Ed Miliband noted that the UK's only female prime minister was one of the first politicians anywhere to recognise the threat of climate change.

However, he said Thatcher was a divisive figure who continued to inspire strong opinions.

"It would be dishonest and not in keeping with the principles that Margaret Thatcher stood for not to be open with this house about the strong opinions and deep divisions there were, and are, over what she did," he said.

"In mining areas, like the one I represent, communities felt angry and abandoned."

But scores of MPs from the opposition Labour party, which has 255 MPs in the 650-seat parliament, boycotted the debate, leaving swathes of the chamber's green leather benches empty.

Labour MP and former actress Glenda Jackson was jeered and booed by Tory MPs when she declared that Thatcher wreaked "the most heinous, social, economic and spiritual damage upon this country".

John Healey was one of the Labour MPs who chose to boycott the parliamentary tribute.

"She was a very divisive figure that for us, in our area in South Yorkshire, left a terrible legacy of blighted and broken lives and communities and families," he said.

"The same would be said amongst those areas where dockers or steelworkers or shipyard workers [worked] in many parts of the country."

'Operation True Blue'

Meanwhile plans for Thatcher's funeral next week turned into a security headache.

Parties in several cities to celebrate the Conservative politician's death on Monday ended in arrests and newspapers reported police may pre-emptively arrest known trouble-makers before they travel to her funeral next week.

Codenamed "Operation True Blue", the ceremonial funeral with military honours on Wednesday will begin with a procession through central London to a service at Saint Paul's Cathedral.

"Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It's what she'd have wanted," said filmmaker Ken Loach, whose movies denounce the impact of Thatcher's policies on working class communities.

Members of the public launched an e-petition on a government website calling for the funeral to be privatised as "an ideal way to cut government expense and further prove the merits of liberalised economics Baroness Thatcher spearheaded".

The petition gathered close to 34,000 signatures before it was shut down without explanation on Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile Thatcher's son, Mark, said his mother would have been "greatly honoured" by the presence of Queen Elizabeth II at her funeral next week.

Thatcher will have a ceremonial funeral with full military honours - a step below a full state funeral, in accordance with her wishes.

Queen Elizabeth will attend. She has not attended the funeral of one of her prime ministers since the state funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965, also held at St Paul's.

In the first reaction from the family, Mark Thatcher said they had been "overwhelmed" by the messages of support they have received since the former British prime minister died on Monday.

"I would like to say how enormously proud and grateful we are that Her Majesty has agreed to attend the service next week in St Paul's," the 59-year-old said outside the Thatcher home in central London.

"And I know my mother would be greatly honoured as well as humbled by her presence."

Both Thatcher's children, Mark and his twin sister Carol, were abroad when their mother died.

"By any measure, my mother was blessed with a long life and very full one," her son said.

Thatcher served as prime minister from 1979 to 1990, dominating a generation of British politics and pushing through controversial reforms that earned her the name 'The Iron Lady'.